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The Discovery of America. 



-®- 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED ON 



COLUMBUS DAY, 



OCTOBER 2 1 St, 1892, 



IN THE 



FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, 

PHILADELPHIA. 



By the Pastor, 
GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, D. D., LL. D. 



-e- 



Published by Request. 



The Discovery of America. 



-<s- 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED ON 



COLUMBUS DAY, 

OCTOBER 2jsf, JS92, 

IN THE 

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, 

PHILADELPHIA. 



-©- 



By the Pastor, 
GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, D. D., LL. D. 



Published by Request. 






Printed by 

ALLEN, LANE &; SCOTT, 

Philadelphia. 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, 



GATHERED as we are, in answer to the invitation of our 
Chief Magistrate, to commemorate the discovery of 
America by Christopher Columbus, it is meet, first of all, 
that we recall as briefly as possible the story of this dis- 
covery. 

Problem of the Not that it w^as, strictly speaking, a dis- 

originai Discovery, ^^^^^.y . j^ was rather a re-discovery. For 

America had already been inhabited we know not how many 
centuries, or even milleniums of centuries. For, believing as 
I do the Bible account of the origin of man, these American 
aborigines must have come in some way or another from the 
land of Eden. Did they pass from i\sia to America before 
these continents were separated by Behring Strait ? Did 
they drift with the winds across the Atlantic ? Did these 
forerunners of Columbus purposely look for a new world ? 
Were the Northmen the original re-discoverers ? These and 
similar questions are fascinating problems w^hich no geog- 
rapher or ethnologist has yet been able to solve. Meanwhile, 
what we know is this ; Christopher Columbus was the great 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



re-discoverer of America. And now let us take a swift sur- 
vey of the outlines of that re-discovery, or, as I will henceforth 
say, discovery. 

Outline of coium- OutHnes, I Say; for although Columbus is 
bus Career. ^^^ ^£ ^j^^ imposing figurcs in history, yet 
many of the details of his career are so lost in the obscurity of 
a far-off and misty age that it is impossible to reproduce 
them with certainty ; possibly, even the mists themselves 
sometimes magnify his personality. For the following de- 
tails I am chiefly indebted to Prof. John Fiske's learned 
and eloquent work, entitled " The Discovery of America." 
Born of humble Italian parents, in the city of Genoa, prob- 
ably about the year 1436; gaining some knowledge of 
Latin, astronomy, geography, mathematics, and drawing, 
perhaps at the University of Pavia ; ever and anon, in the 
course of his youth, making adventurous voyages on the 
Mediterranean, as was natural for one born at the seaport of 
Genoa; about the year 1470 removing to Lisbon, Portugal, 
which had already become the "chief centre of nautical 
science in Europe," where, with his younger brother, Barthol- 
omew, to meet a sudden and growing demand, he earned his 
bread by making maps, charts, and globes; wedding, at the 
age of thirty-seven, Philippa, "the charming daughter" of 
the skillful Italian navigator, Perestrelo; beginning to believe, 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



or at least to cherish, the subHme idea that the eastern coast 
of Asia might be reached by saiHng from Europe westward ; 
appealing to King John II. of Portugal for aid in trying this 
westward route to Asia, but unsuccessfully, because his 
scheme was deemed visionary; forsaking Portugal for Spain, 
where he entered the service of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
vainly imploring their endorsement of his enterprise; offering 
fruitless overtures to the courts of England and France ; for 
nearly a score of years seeking interviews at the courts and 
banks and monasteries of Portugal and Spain, but repulsed, 
even laughed at by the urchins of the streets as a harmless 
madman ; prematurely aging, yet dauntless in his heroic en- 
thusiasm ; at length, cheered by the hospitality of Juan 
Perez, prior of the Monastery of La Rabida, through whose 
friendly offices he was summoned to lay his plans before 
Queen Isabella; angering Her Majesty by the extravagance 
of his demands for reward in case his expedition should prove 
successful; haughtily turning his back on the court, and in- 
domitably starting again for France; returning to the Spanish 
court in answer to a sudden summons from Isabella; nego- 
tiating with the royal court an agreement signed April 
17th, 1492, among the terms of which were that he should 
have for himself during his life, and for his heirs forever, 
the office of admiral in all the islands and continents which 
he might discover, and that he should be viceroy and 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



governor-general over all the said islands and continents, and 
that he should be entitled to reserve for himself one-tenth 
of all precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and all other treas- 
ures discovered or gained within his admiralty (every penny 
of which he vowed to devote to the rescue of the Holy 
Sepulchre) ; furnished with three caravels or tiny ships, 
named the " Santa Maria" (his own flagship), the " Pinta," and 
the " Nina," conveying ninety persons ; setting sail from Palos, 
Spain, half an hour before sunrise, Friday, August 3rd, 1492 ; 
steering, as he imagined and believed, for Japan and the east 
coast of Asia ; prospered with a favoring breeze, yet disap- 
pointed in not sooner reaching Asia ; quieting the forebodings 
of his crews by understating each day the distance made the 
previous; startled about October 4th by a threat that he 
would be thrown overboard ; indomitably holding to his west- 
ward course in spite of disappointment and signs of general 
mutiny ; overjoyed by the shout of " Land ahead ! " at two 
o'clock, Friday morning, October 12th (New Style, October 
2ist), 1492; debarking at daybreak, and devoutly calling the 
island where he landed San Salvador; deserted by Martin 
Pinzon, the captain of the " Pinta;" discovering the island of 
Hayti, and naming it Hispaniola (Spanish Land), believing 
it to be Japan ; disheartened by the wreck of his own flag- 
ship, the " Santa Maria ; " starting for his homeward course 
in the little " Nina," January 4th, 1493 ; after a stormy voy- 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



age again reaching Palos, March 15th; welcomed with tri- 
umphal honors by the court and people of Spain because they 
believed that he had discovered a shorter way to the gold and 
gems and spices of the Indies and Cathay ; easily securing 
men and money for his second voyage ; sailing from Cadiz 
September 25th, 1493, with seventeen ships and fifteen hun- 
dred men ; after a pleasant voyage of six weeks, sighting land 
along the Caribbean Sea ; discovering many islands, such as 
Dominica, Antigua, Guadaloupe, Porto Rico, Jamaica, still 
cherishing the belief that he was skirting the east shore of 
Asia; discovering in the south part of Hayti some gold 
mines, which awakened the surmise that after all the island 
was not Japan, but King Solomon's Land of Ophir ; return- 
ing to Spain in March, 1496, to answer the charge that his 
government as admiral and viceroy had been tyrannical; 
learning to his chagrin that the court had issued an edict 
granting to other navigators the right of making expeditions 
westward to the coast of Asia, a right which he had supposed 
was to be reserved for himself alone ; after vexatious delays,' 
setting sail again for his third voyage. May 30th, 1498, steer- 
ing southwest, and discovering the South American Trinidad 
and Orinoco outlet, which he imagined to be " Eden Land ; " 
returning to Hispaniola (Hayti), and finding the island in the 
possession of rebels and personal enemies; stung by the news 
that the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, had sailed 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



around the west coast of Africa, doubled the Cape of Good 
Hope, and actually reached the west coast of Hindustan ; 
superseded as viceroy of the Indies by one Bobadilla, a 
minion of his desperate enemy, Fonseca, principal chaplain to 
the royal court : arrested in August, 1500, by this Bobadilla, 
and sent back in chains to Spain ; released, and received in 
the Alhambra by Isabella with pathetic demonstrations of 
honor ; setting sail from Cadiz for his fourth and last voyage 
May nth, 1502, still persisting in the belief that the West 
Indies or American Archipelago, which he had discovered, 
was the same as the East Indies, .or Asiatic Archipelago' 
for which he had started; fruitlessly searching along the 
Caribbean coast for the Strait of Malacca; shipwrecked on 
the coast of Jamaica; returning once more to Spain, broken in 
health and in spirit; dying at Valladolid in obscurity and pov- 
erty. May 20th, 1506; buried first at Valladolid, then at 
Seville, then at San Domingo, then at Havana, where his 
dust still probably lies. This is the outline story of Chris- 
topher Columbus. 

Outline of Colum- -^^^^ ^ noblc Story it is : for it is the rev- 

bus' Cliaracter. /=.lnf w-,,, ^f 1 1 1 

elation of a noble character. And so w^e 
pass from this swift outline of the career of Columbus to an 
equally swift outline of his character. 

And first a few words as to his personal aspect. He is 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



said to have been a man of commanding presence, tall and 
strongly built, "with fair, ruddy complexion and keen blue- 
gray eyes that easily kindled," courteous in manner, fascinat- 
ing in speech, aglow with an intense enthusiasm, impressive 
with the indefinable authoritativeness of a grand aspiration. 
As to his mental gifts and acquisitions it is not needful to 
say a great deal. He was not exceptionally great in the in- 
tellectual sense of the word. His native endowment was 
strong: but his learning was meagre; his philosophy was mys- 
tical; his logic was fallacious; his conclusion was grotesque. 
For observe precisely what in this matter of discovery Co- 
lumbus did, or rather what he did not do. He was not, as 
we so often imagine, the first to conceive and prove that the 
earth is round; that idea, Professor Fiske assures us, is as 
old as Aristotle. He did not sail westward prompted by the 
belief that he would discover in the western hemisphere a 
new continent, or, to use the modern phrase, a New World. 
But he sailed from Palos in the belief that if he continued 
his course with the setting sun long enough he would finally 
come round to the east shore of Asia. He lived and died in 
the conviction that what he had discovered was a direct 
westward passage to what is now known as the East Indies. 
In brief, undertaking to find an ocean-way westward to the 
east coast of the continent of Asia, he providentially stum- 
bled on the islands skirting the east coast of the continent of 



lO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



America, never dreaming that it was the coast of a New 
World. In this intellectual respect (to use language sug- 
gested by Maria's forged letter in "Twelfth Night"), Colum- 
bus was not among those who are born great, nor among 
those who consciously achieve greatness, but among those 
who subsequently have greatness thrust upon them. How 
immense that greatness was we shall see later on. 

Meanwhile, let us reverently acknowledge that in the moral 
sphere Columbus was truly great. Not that he was by any 
means a perfect character. He was ambitious, avaricious, 
cruel, deceitful, despotic, superstitious. Our friends of the 
Latin Church had better wait awhile before they canonize or 
even beatify him. Nevertheless, let us not be so cruel or 
unjust as to judge him by modern tests. Neither Calvin 
nor Luther nor Augustine nor Peter nor David nor Abraham 
can altogether afford to be scanned in the full blaze of our 
nearly twentieth century. It may be that four hundred 
years from to-day even the saints of this generation will need 
merciful biographers. 

Nevertheless, Christopher Columbus moved in a conspicu- 
ously moral realm. Geographically mistaken, he was spirit- 
ually right. He lived amid ideas; he was drawn forward by 
ideals. If he was ambitious, it was that he might benefit his 
fellowmen. If he was cruel, it was that he might bring mercy 
to many. If he was deceitful, it was that he might prop^- 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. I I 



gate what he believed to be the truth. If he was avaricious, 
it was that he might advance the interests of what he felt to 
be the only true religion. To open a new and better way of 
commerce to the far-off East, and to plant on those pagan 
shores the standard of the Holy Cross, was his sublime aspira- 
tion, his unconquerable purpose. For a man's moral force is 
better measured by the obstacles he overcomes than by the 
speed with which he runs. Recall now the many and terri- 
ble obstacles which Columbus had to overcome — obstacles of 
mediaeval ignorance, such as false conception, false tradition, 
false philosophy, false science, and, above all, false maps; 
obstacles of poverty, indifference, misconception, repulse, ob- 
loquy, jealousy, hostility; obstacles of delay, disappointment, 
uncertainty, mutiny, treachery, superstition, hardship, ill- 
health, failure. And yet how bravely, how sublimely, and, 
in the moral sense, how victoriously he battled with it all for 
more than a quarter of a century ! How grandly the late 
laureate, prophet-interpreter for human hearts, has portrayed 
him in his poet-picture of the Admiral of the Ocean in Chains ! 
And the secret of his greatness was that he had supreme, 
overcoming confidence in an idea. If ever a man walked by 
faith, not by sight, that man was Christopher Columbus. 
For it is of the very essence of faith that it is rooted in dark- 
ness ; if it were rooted in light, it would not be faith ; it 
would be sight. " Faith is assurance of things hoped for, a 



12 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



conviction of things not seen." So far as Columbus knew, 
no one had ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean, or even heard 
that it had any west coast at all. True, Norsemen had long 
before crossed northern portions of the Atlantic, and discov- 
ered Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. But there is no evi- 
dence, so far as I am aware, that Columbus had ever heard 
of these discoveries. If he had, then of course he is not en- 
titled to the unique glory of being the great discoverer. No ; 
Columbus was inspired by faith, not by sight, not even b}^ 
science. True, the science of his day, in admitting that the 
earth is a sphere, admitted the possibility that the Atlantic 
had somewhere a west boundary, having, of course, an east 
coast. But the possibility was regarded as a theory rather 
than as a fact. Whereas Columbus believed the theory to 
be a fact ; and he believed it so supremely that he devoted all 
the resources of his strong manhood — physical, mental, 
moral — to the discovery of that far-off western shore. He 
did not know where that shore lay, but he believed that it 
lay somewhere westward. And so what seemed to others 
the *'sea of darkness " seemed to Columbus a sea of light. 
To cross that sea and find that unknown coast Columbus felt 
himself divinely called. And this was faith indeed. And 
so, what the Scripture says of Abraham we may say of 
Columbus: "By faith Columbus, when he was called, obeyed 
to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an in- 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 1 3 



heritance ; and he went out, not knowing whither he went." 
If Abraham was the Columbus of the twentieth century 
before Christ, Columbus was the Abraham of the fifteenth 
century after Christ. 

This, then, is what made Columbus so conspicuously great. 
It was not the splendor of his genius — his theory was a fallacy 
in its science, his " discovery " was a blunder in its geography 
— but it was the splendor of his faith ; a faith so sublime and 
dauntless that it enabled him to brave every discouragement, 
every possibility of unknown disaster. All honor, then, to 
Christopher Columbus, heroic Admiral of Faith's unknown 
Ocean ! 

Outline of coium- Having thus attempted this swift out- 
bus- Service. ijne of the career and the character of 
Columbus, let me now attempt an equally swift outline of 
his great service to mankind. Not that he was aware of this 
service. Emerson's oft-quoted line — " he builded better than 
he knew " — was probably never more finely illustrated than 
in the case of Columbus. He started to find a western route 
to Asia, and stumbled, without ever knowing it, on America. 
It was not till years after he died that anybody dreamed that 
there was any such thing as an American continent, or a New 
World, in distinction from the Old. Yet it is to the unique 
and everlasting glory of Christopher Columbus that he led 
the way across the Atlantic, opening a new world to mankind 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



— the first pilot of the westward-coming nationalities. It 
was a striking illustration of the truth that we seldom know 
when we do a really great thing. 

A man's heart deviseth his way : 
But Jehovah directeth his steps. 

And now let us glance at some of the stupendous results 
flowing from that unconscious discovery by Columbus ; in 
other words, at the providential meaning of America. 

Columbus opened First, the discovcry of America opened 

a New World of 

Physical Resources: up to mankind a new w^orld of physical re- 
sources. True, the New World, physically or geologically 
speaking, is really older than the Old World. But, histori- 
cally and potentially speaking, America, from the time of 
Columbus, in the matter of material" resources, has really 
been a new world. Stretching from the Arctic to the Ant- 
arctic, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, occupying an area of 
fourteen million nine hundred and fifty thousand square 
English miles, abounding in every variety of climate, scenery, 
soils, vegetation, minerals, natural resources of every sort — 
America is indeed a new world of physical opportunities, 
more than answering to the ancient Chronicler's description 
of the Promised Land : — 

"Jehovah thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks 
of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills ; 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 1 5 

a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates ; 
a land of oil-olives and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread with- 
out scarceness ; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills 
thou mayest dig brass." 

No wonder, then, that America has proved a natural 
reservoir for the overflowing populations of the Old World. 
And this leads us to our next point. 

And National Re- The discovcry of America opened up to 
sources; mankind a new world of national resources. 

Hitherto the great nations of the world had been largely 
heterogeneous in their structure, admitting, it is true, foreign 
elements, but only partially nationalizing them. The Roman 
people, for example, absorbed other nations, but rarely assimi- 
lated them. Whereas the i\merican people has been, in a 
unique sense, heterogeneous in its parts, yet homogeneous in 
its whole; "distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea" — 
E pluribtis iininn. This, in fact, has been one of the secrets 
of our conspicuous prosperity. We have welcomed, and we 
still welcome, the Englishman with his sturdiness, the 
Scotchman with his shrewdness, the 'Irishman with his wit, 
the German with his industry, the Scandinavian with his 
thrift, the Frenchman with his courtesy, the Switzer with 
his patriotism, the Italian with his picturesqueness, the Jew 
with his individuality, even the Chinaman with his laundry, 
J^ay, we even say to our brothers of Canada and the Britisl) 



1 6 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



possessions north, Give up; and to our sisters of the American 
continent south, Keep not back ; thus bringing our sons from 
far, our daughters from the end of the earth. Ay, the Moses 
of the New World still says to his father-in-law, the Hobab 
of the Old, " Come thou with us and we will do thee good." 
And the Hobab of the Old World has reciprocated Moses' 
goodness. The native American stock, enriched by these 
foreign grafts, has grown into the most magnificent of cedars, 
sending forth its branches from Maine to Texas, and its 
roots from Atlantic to Pacific. 

But there is danger in this very prosperity. There may be 
such a thing as national engorgement, absorbing without as- 
similating, swallowing without incorporating. The American 
organism is beginning to outgrow its period of adolescence, 
and it is no longer safe to devour everything with its former 
youthful voracity and indifference to mastication. The time 
is fast approaching when we must put a check, not on immi- 
gration, but on naturalisation. My countrymen, I must speak 
plainly, for I feel keenly. I protest against the policy (for it 
is politics, not statesmanship) that discriminates, on the one 
hand, against the native American, having a personal, hered- 
itary, intelligent, patriotic interest in the land of his birth, 
yet compelling him to wait twenty-one years before he can 
vote : and that discriminates, on the other hand, in favor 
of the alien — an alien, it may be, ignorant, drunken, anarch- 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 1 7 

ical, too poor or too venal to pay his own poll-tax, yet 
demanding of him a probation of only five years, and then 
allowing him to vote on the most tremendous problems 
affecting the destiny of a people in whom he has no 
hereditary pride, under a government in which he has no 
personal interest save that of a gambler watching for a 
lucky revolution of a roulette wheel. I know that we 
must not be "forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby 
some have entertained angels unawares." But no duty of 
hospitality can be so boundless as to be forever demand- 
ing that we should entertain strangers at the expense of 
natives. I speak not as a politician, but as a patriot, 
when I protest against your levying a tariff on native 
Americans by lavishing free trade on un-Americanized for- 
eigners. I believe in the patriotic pride which prompted 
Daniel Webster to say in the Senate: "I was born an 
American ; I will live an American ; I shall die an Amer- 
ican." 

x\nd yet just here a word of opposite, or rather com- 
plemental, counsel is needed, and so we pass to our next 
point. 



And International ^hc discovcry of America opened up to 
Resources; mankind a new world of international re- 
sources. For the American continent is, after all, but a part 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



of the earth; the American people is but one member, 
though an important member, in the one human family. 
Now it is the rare felicity of America that, in virtue of 
her geographical isolation, being laved on both coasts by 
mighty oceans, and also in virtue of her political isolation, 
being free from what Jefferson called " entangling allian- 
ces " with foreign nations, that she occupies the vantage 
ground of being the neutral territory of the nations, and 
therefore the natural and common mediator for the peoples. 
It is the majestic possibility of America that, looking to- 
ward the Northern Aurora, she can, as it were, extend 
her right hand across the Atlantic, and her left hand across 
the Pacific, and speak peace to the trans-oceanic races; or, 
as George Canning, in "The King's Message," says: "1 
called the New World into existence to redress the bal- 
ance of the Old." But America can never realize this 
magnificent prerogative until she distinctly conceives her- 
self as being not only national, but also international ; not 
only as a great nation among other great nations, but also 
as a corporate, organic member of a still vaster Nation, 
even the body politic of Humanity, the corporation of 
Mankind. Now the discovery of America, by opening the 
two great oceans for common transit and intercourse and 
property, made the two hemispheres complemental, round- 
ing the angles of the nations into the one globe of Man- 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 1 9 



kind ; thus realizing the Pauline conception of niaking of 
the old twain the one new man in Christ. And this leads 
us to our next point. 

The discovery of America opened up to 

And Christian Re- •' 

sources. mankind a new world of Christian resources. 
Christian, I say, not Protestant : for this latter word is too 
modern and narrow^ and feeble, having acquired its techni- 
cal meaning as late as 1529 at Speyer on the Rhine; by 
that very fact surrendering the case in advance to an 
older, but, as we think, a schismatic church. Whereas 
Christianity is older than Protestantism ; for it w^as born 
at Jerusalem, not Rome; its only Head is Jesus, never a 
Peter. Accordingly, in this perpetual use of the word 
" Protestant," I fear that, as the Queen said to Hamlet 
about the lady in the play, Protestantism " protests too 
much, methinks." Instead then of persisting in the use of 
this weak term " Protestants," let us insist on the good old 
term originally given to the disciples at Antioch, namely, 
"Christians." Now^ Columbus, it is true, was a devout 
Romanist, and I for one honor him for his devoutness. I 
am glad that our brothers of the Latin faith have so en- 
ergetically improved the opportunity of celebrating his piety 
in so many enthusiastic ways; I am sure that we would 
have done the same had Columbus been a Presbyterian 



20 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

or a Baptist. I cannot help thinking, however, how 
strange it is that a Church which claims to be infallible 
failed to discern his saintliness while living, condemning him 
to obloquy and poverty, yet, after four hundred years, 
elaborately garnishing his sepulchre. But let us be large, 
as becomes Christianity, and forget all such as this. Let 
us heartily acknowledge that Columbus was a saintly mem- 
ber of the Roman Catholic Church, heroically starting on 
his westward voyage for the devout purpose of consecrating 
all the treasures he might discover to the recovery of the 
Holy Sepulchre and the triumph of his mighty and cherished 
Church over all the world. From his point of view, it was a 
noble purpose ; and nobly did he try to achieve it. All 
honor to Christopher Columbus for his sublime piety! 

But here, as so often elsewhere, the proverb holds true : 
" Man proposes, but God disposes." For although Colum- 
bus made his heroic voyage in the interest of the Roman 
Church, yet he was, as we believe, providentially induced to 
change his course from westerly to southwesterly, thus land- 
ing amid Cuban and Caribbean waters; and therefore never 
rearing the Roman Cross on American soil. America, or at 
least that part of it which is controlled by the nation known 
as the American people, was colonized and settled by repre- 
sentatives of a Christianity older, and, as we believe, freer and 
truer than Romanism. And among the many rich boons 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 21 

which these Christian colonists gave to the New World, 
none is richer than the boon of a free Church untrammeled 
by alliance with the State. Thank God, no Alexander VI. 
is now enthroned on the Vatican Hill, assuming the right to 
divide the newly-discovered western hemisphere by a Bull, 
as he did in 1493, "drawing a line from pole to pole west of 
the Azores, and giving the east to Portugal and the west to 
Spain." No ; ours is the land of free soil, free men, free 
speech, free schools, and, best of all, free church. We, 
Christian freemen of the New World, have the blessed priv- 
ilege of showing to our brethren of the Old World, chafing 
under the burdens of State churches, that Christianity flour- 
ishes best when freest from civic alliances and political help. 
To summarize:— The discovery of America opened up to 
mankind a new world of physical resources; a new world 
of national resources; a new world of international resources ; 
a new world of Christian resources. All praise and laud 
then to Christopher Columbus ; for in leading the way to 
America the God of the nations used him as his instrument in 
opening to the American people a great and effectual door. 
In brief, America is the land of Opportunities. 

Opportunity is ^^^ Opportunity means responsibility. 

Responsibility, jj^g vciy splcudor of our privilege invests 

it with unspeakable solemnity. For privilege, if unused or if 



22 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



abused, ceases to be privilege, and becomes perdition ; and 
the greater the privilege, the greater the perdition. Let 
me then, amid these brilliant demonstrations of banner and 
parade and oratory, summon you, my countrymen, to a 
new consecration. The commemoration of the discovery 
of America pledges the American people to Christian pa- 
triotism. For no resources of country — whether agricultural, 
mineral, political, or educational — if unblessed by Christian- 
ity, can save that country from relapsing, sooner or later, 
into barbarism. Again, this commemoration pledges the 
American people to Christiaft education. Nothing in con- 
nection with this memorable anniversary has been so beau- 
tiful or so inspiring as the prominence given to our school 
children in these national festivities. God bless the chil- 
dren of America ! But no education, however broad or 
however exact, that does not take into account the needs 
of the religious nature and the sacred possibilities of the 
hereafter, can save scholarship from becoming morally idiotic. 
Again, this commemoration pledges the American people 
to Christian morality. For no virtue, whether of courage, 
honesty, veracity, justice, chastity, temperance, generosity, 
self-control, unless consecrated by the spirit of the Naza- 
rene Master, can save character from the indifference of 
secularism or the blankness of atheism. In fine, the com- 
memoration of the discovery of America pledges the Ameri- 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 23 



can people to Christianity itself. For no nation, whatever be 
the breadth of its lands, the richness of its resources, the 
strength of its armaments, the sagacity of its statesmanship, 
the amplitude of its scholarship, the warmth of its patriot- 
ism, the brilliancy of its history, the splendor of its civil- 
ization, can, under the inexorable law of the divine right- 
eousness, hope, without the conservative help of Christianity, 
to escape the desolate fate that has befallen warlike Assyria, 
learned Egypt, classic Greece, imperial Rome. 

Now therefore be wise, O ye kings : 

Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. 

Serve Jehovah with fear. 

And rejoice with trembling. 

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way, 

For his wrath will soon be kindled. 

Blessed are all they tHat put their trust in him ! 

Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth, King of kings 
and Lord of lords, we praise thee for thy sovereignty, and 
bless thee for thy goodness. We thank thee that the lines have 
fallen to ns in pleasant places, and that zue have a goodly her- 
itage. We thank thee for onr civic fathers ; for their patriot- 
ism, their virtue, their wisdom, their courage, their success, 
their legacy. Especially do zve thank thee this day for thy 
servant CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS; for his faith, his 
energy, his steadfastness, his Jieroism, his discovery. May 



24 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



we ever be ivorthy of the heroes^ the benefactors, the saints, 
who have preceded us. Command thy blessing upon thy serv- 
ants, the President of the United States, the Governor of 
Pennsylvania, the Mayor of Philadelphia, and all zvho are in 
authority in all the States and Territories. We pray for all 
who are in high place everyzvJicre ; that the nations may lead 
quiet lives, in all godliness and grace. May it please thee to 
bless every plan tuider taken for the glory of thy kingdom, the 
prosperity of the United States, and the zvelfare of mankind. 
Be pleased to hasten the day zvhen all ignorance shall be dis- 
pelled ; zvhen all injustice and oppression and cruelty shall be 
swept aivay ; zvhen all intemperance and covetousness and vice 
of every kind shall vanish ; zvhen all zvars and rumors of 
zvars shall cease; zvJien every selfish barrier betzveen the 
nations shall be broken dozvn ; zvhen every family and every 
individual througJiout the world shall dzvell in security and 
joy and righteousness ; zvhen Jesus Christ thy Son shall be 
crozvncd Lord of Mankind. So shall thy zvay be known upon 
earth ; thy saving health among all nations. 

Nozv unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only 
God^ be all honor and glory and majesty for ever and ever ; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



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